


to live without a lifeline

by plnkblue



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Parallels, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 07:56:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20850077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plnkblue/pseuds/plnkblue
Summary: "It's always about your friends, isn't it?"Roxas tilts his head to look at him. He’s not angry or bothered, but harbors a curious sort of expression. Vanitas wonders, not for the first time, if Roxas sees the shadows of Sora in his skin, as well. His gaze looks far too much like pity. As if Vanitas needs any of that. After a beat of silence, Roxas responds with a question of his own. “What’s so wrong with that?”





	to live without a lifeline

“Why are you going?”

Vanitas is nothing if not blunt, but the question still takes Roxas by surprise. The two had been keeping each other silent company for awhile, the kind of uncomplicated quiet that stretches between strangers who recognize each other. Vanitas peers down at him from where he leans against the wall, arms folded across his chest. 

“Sora brought me back,” Roxas says after a while, a sort of muted fondness in his tone. “I owe a lot to him, you know. My world, my friends. Finding him is only natural.” 

Of course. He’d heard the notion from someone else already; Riku was stalwart and steadfast, a moon in constant orbit around its star. That kind of body cannot burn without its gifted light, but even if it could, Vanitas doesn’t think he’d be the type to try. He’s not the only one.

_ You’re going along with this charade, too? _

_ Of course I am. _

_ What do you care? You barely even knew him. _

_ He saved me. He saved all of us. I can’t not help him, too. _

_ You sound like it’s an obligation. _

_ ...Come with us. _

_ (come with me.) _

Sora. It was always about Sora, always chasing that faraway horizon that kept itself just beyond arm’s length, lingering just long enough to allow for someone to brush it with their fingertips and believe they had touched something worth saving, that could even be saved in the first place. What’s there to save? The sun paints over the sea and sky in every color possible just to tell the world that it was here, and the earth swallows it without mercy every time. Like clockwork.

Like sacrifice.

He thinks of a battle from the age of his body, lines in the sand long since scribbled out and washed away by tides and teardrops, of the lengths one would go to protect the ones who matter to them. The differences between the two of them are stagnant and stark (always will be, always will be) but in this moment, Roxas has never looked more like Ventus. Vanitas adverts his eyes, scoffing. “Its always about your friends, isn’t it?” Low. Familiar. _ At least I have some. _ He swallows past the thickness in his throat, chin down, mask up. This one will not splinter.

Roxas tilts his head to look at him. He’s not angry or bothered, but harbors a curious sort of expression. Vanitas wonders, not for the first time, if Roxas sees the shadows of Sora in his skin, as well. His gaze looks far too much like pity. As if Vanitas needs any of that. He sets his face in a stony scowl, and after a beat of silence, Roxas responds with a question of his own. “What’s so wrong with that?”

And god, it’s so matter of fact, Vanitas has half a mind to cross the distance between them and shake him by his shoulders. Maybe then he would channel something besides this effortless nonchalance. Instead, he settles for uncrossing his arms and burying his hands into his pockets, where he can hide the curl of his fists. “Of course,” He leans back, and the crown of his head thumps dully against the wall. The temporary tremor in his temples is almost comforting. Vanitas sniffs, a single tiny laugh crawling its way out of his throat and into the air. It’s a dry, bitter thing. “You’re right. Why should I have expected anything else?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” There’s a soft bite to Roxas’ tone, a butter knife meant only to slice through half melted solids. He’s not defensive, not entirely, but Vanitas knows that his question still digs. 

Vanitas turns his next words over in his mind. “It’s just interesting,” he starts, shoulders shrugging. “You. Everyone. How desperately you guys try to save those who never asked for it.”

Hurt flashes briefly across Roxas’ face, and Vanitas bites his tongue. His teeth are sharp, cutting easily, and the familiar taste of iron fills his mouth. He still didn’t get it, not really, but it wasn’t hard to see why. Roxas, Ventus, Sora— they all knew friendships. They nurtured them like infant birds, building nests around their hearts and letting time lead their growth naturally. 

If they were the birds that took flight, then Vanitas was the one who had broken his wings on his way to the ground.

“It’s not a matter of what they asked of us,” Roxas retorts. “It’s about keeping them around, not letting them go even when they keep leaving you behind.” A small smile graces his lips, and Vanitas rubs his cut along the back of his teeth. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my friends. Of course I’m going to try and help them, too, you know?”

“Yeah,” Vanitas says plainly. The syllable comes out choked, and he clears his throat. Pathetic. “I guess that makes sense. After all, I wouldn’t know the first thing about friendships.”

Immediately, Roxas’ face falls. “I didn’t mean—”

“Whatever.” Vanitas pushes off the wall, fists still clenched inside in his pockets. He doesn’t miss the flavor of the word in his mouth as it slips off his bleeding tongue. Harsh, bitter. He knows it’s not just the taste of metal that makes him want to gag. 

Roxas is strong. That much Vanitas is keenly aware of. And if he’s anything like Ventus, like Sora, then it’s because of his friends that he is so. Even now, after everything, he feels sick with envy. What must that feel like, to be so sure of someone else’s place in your story that you could go on writing the pages of their own once they were gone? How warm of a heart does one have to harbor to be worthy of that kind of preservation?

Vanitas remembers the desert distinctly. Barren, hungry; it begged for the scraps of him that the master so generously left behind in his wake. It devoured every last bit of light that could have possibly clung to his skin in the aftermath of separation. There was nothing more to that place besides screaming and solitude, and in hindsight, Vanitas thinks those were the closest thing to friendship he’d ever gotten. 

Maybe they’re singing ballads about him right now.

Roxas is still gazing at him with uncertainty, and it sets Vanitas’ skin on fire. He wants to yell and spit venom at him, tell him off and wipe that stupid expression off his face before he gets too comfortable wearing it. He wants to whirl around and expose his coiled fists, to punch the wall he was previously so gentle with. Anger is a good thing, isn’t it? It’s what comes naturally to him in moments like these, when he feels so cornered and exposed, held up to the light like something to marvel at.

This should be easy, right?

“I’m sorry,” Roxas speaks, and it sends a full body flinch coursing through Vanitas. “Really, I didn’t—”

“Save it,” Vanitas bites out. “I get it, I’m the outlier here.” If resentment is the thing he can comfortably hide himself away in, it only makes sense that Roxas has something like that, too. Connections, people, a kind of kinship that Vanitas only knows from secondhand stories. He feels his lip tremble dangerously. Foolish of him to think he could attempt to understand any of them. 

When Roxas opens his mouth again, it’s to chuckle lightly. Vanitas blinks slowly, bewildered. There’s a soft sort of smile on Roxas’ face, the kind of thing that blooms upon seeing something familiar. “You’re wrong about that,” he states, seemingly unconcerned with the way Vanitas’ expression darkens at the implication (it better not be pitiful, he swears). “I used to be just like you, chasing after Sora.”

Vanitas scoffs. “You guys are the ones going off to look for him. If anything, I’m doing the opposite.” 

“Not like that, really.” Roxas pauses, considering his words. His hand comes to rest over his chest as he thinks. “I just… I was lied to for most of my life about who I was and where I came from. Sora was a part of that, but it was always wrong, and really, I just wanted what he had. What I thought I couldn’t have.” 

It sounds so simple. Almost. “So then, you know what it’s like to get the short end of the stick,” Vanitas chides. “You can _ sympathize _. Great. Do you want a consolation prize or something?”

Vanitas’ defensive sarcasm doesn’t faze Roxas. He continues, “I thought I hated him. Why did he get to exist, and not me? What made one of us deserving and not the other? The truth of the matter, really, was that we both were.”

Something about that statement twists a knife into Vanitas’ gut. How many times has he felt those sharp stabbing pangs of jealousy when he caught a glimpse of Ventus laughing, pleasant, unburdened, even after all this time? How many times did he forego sleep for self scrutiny, picking apart his resuscitated heart until he was left with just himself, fragile and immature as he was without the echoes of another? Even with this second chance, this body and heart of his own making, he was still left searching for pieces of himself.

The question spills out of Vanitas, unbidden. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

Another small smile. “He told me.”

Vanitas remembers it like it was yesterday, the memories tucked up there on the tallest shelf besides his ones of the desert and of a life older than the epoch of his bones. How he swam through darkness, endlessly, repeatedly, until a light that felt like home cut away at the curtains. He had chosen this path, this staircase into the depths, and that boy with a halo for a smile still thought he was worthy of saving.

What in all the worlds could have made him think that?

_ Why are you even here? _

_ I saw you back then, you know? You just looked so… sad. _

_ Aw, your compassion is endearing. Now get lost. _

_ No! I came here to save you. _

_ That’s nice, but you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. _

_ I have a lot of practice. _

A hand on his shoulder brings him out of the back of his mind, and his eyes fall on Roxas standing in front of him. His eyes are sharp, the kind of blue that could drown him without a second thought if he let it. “It’s not your fault,” he says slowly.

Vanitas almost laughs. He knows that much; what little he had seen of Sora before had him guessing that this was something that would have happened regardless of whether or not he had been brought back in the process. Sora was just like that, making friends left and right, reaching out to everyone regardless of how far gone they were. He had done that to him, too; stared him down on the battlefield, two broken halves of a mirror glued back together. Hand outstretched, an open invitation that Vanitas had slapped away defiantly.

So what if this one dull boy had called out to him? It’s not like he could ever be whole again if he tried.

And yet, here he was.

Vanitas settles on a chuckle. “Maybe not. But there’s a version of this where I’m not here.”

_ And he is. _

It’s unspoken, but Roxas hears it all the same. “Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But in this version, at least, we want the both of you here.”

Vanitas hears the unspoken question. _ Are you coming with us? _

He doesn’t know. Not really. But he thinks he knows a good place to start.

Buried in his pockets, his lets the tension seep out of his fists.

**Author's Note:**

> i post abt kh stuff on [twitter](https://twitter.com/vanitascore)!!


End file.
